After seeing the dinosaurs we headed back to more family reunion-ing. On July 3rd we went to see the whoosh-kaboom fireworks with two families of cousins. We found the perfect spot and the kids and I had a lot of fun. It is definitely more fun with cousins. It's fun to be in Utah on July 4th. It is a real holiday there complete with fireworks and parades and flags. At home you hardly notice that it is anything special until the sun goes down then the neighborhood erupts with illegal fireworks for a little while.
On the 4th we headed up to Brigham City for a picnic and reunion with all of my cousins on my Dad's side of the family. It was fun to see them. Mom had fun activities for the kids, large and small. The best activity was simply a stack of appliance boxes and rolls of tape. It became a fort or city of something. The kids had a lot of fun with it.
Then since it was an extremely hot day, Grandma broke out a box of squirt bottles. People got wet.
The parachute made an appearance. Mom has had it for many years now, but the kids still have fun with it.
On Friday the local museum had a quilt show so we took some of the kids to see what it was all about. I would like to say that they spent their time carefully examinine each amazing piece of art.
But they looked like this sometimes too, completely absorbed in a little screen.
Saturday was the tour of historic Box Elder County.
The first stop was Promontory, the site of the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads to create the first transcontinental railroad. This is about 30 minutes from Brigham City. On summer Saturdays and holidays they bring out the trains and have reenactors there who do a short streamlined version of the ceremonies on the actual day on May 10, 1869. (These aren't the original trains, but they still look really cool.) They had people there portraying Leland Stanford and other dignitaries. This was one of Buddy Boy's favorite parts of the trip. This surprised me a bit, but he really loves history. I had checked out a couple of kids books on the transcontinental railroad from the library to read beforehand so that the visit would have some context and meaning. It is one thing to see historic sites. It is quite another to understand why it is interesting and important.
It was fun to see my Jr. High shop teacher there. He has been doing this for decades.
Buddy Boy got to hold the real replica golden spike and sit at the telegraph table. He was quite excited. He even practiced a bit of Morse code at the telegraph operator's table.
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